


Remember The Rain

by baeksbabygirl



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Angst, Domestic, M/M, Memory Loss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-30
Updated: 2017-06-30
Packaged: 2018-11-21 08:32:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11353740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/baeksbabygirl/pseuds/baeksbabygirl
Summary: Jongin knows Chanyeol should be someone he finds important - maybe even someone he loves, but he can't remember the man after a terrible accident several months ago.





	Remember The Rain

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt #24: Jongin wishes he could remember the boy who looks at him like he is his entire world, but he can’t remember a single thing and it hurts to forget someone you knew you once loved.

“Thank you.” He murmured, his voice coming out in a rasp as he spoke the words. His voice had not always been like this, but it seemed that every now and again it would rasp and crack without his knowledge of why. His memory never served him correctly, and truly the only things he actually remembered were his name and then basic things like how to breathe and eat.

Jongin never seemed to remember the tall man that served him breakfast, lunch and dinner. The man that promised Jongin he was no burden at all, and that it was his pleasure to help him with everything. There was something in the man’s eyes that Jongin could understand, but did not know why it was directed towards him. He could understand the feeling behind the fleeting looks, the soft fragile touches and the promises that he would be there if Jongin needed anyone or anything.

He didn’t want to seem needy – didn’t want to need someone to help with normal, day-to-day tasks. But to be quite honest, he could not remember how to do things, could not remember where he was unless Chanyeol reminded him. And Jongin was surprised that he even remembered the other man’s name. Sometimes he had to be reminded, and for a second he could see the pain flicker across his face for a moment before it disappeared again and he was a mask of serenity and calm – of understanding.

Chanyeol was too patient with Jongin. At least, that was how it seemed. He wasn’t sure how to describe it at all – how patient Chanyeol was, or exactly what he did for Jongin, but the fact remained.

He did too much and received too little in return.

Jongin knew there was something missing – knew it deep in his core whenever he woke in the morning. The doctors had told him that the memory loss was unique and that it could possibly return over time, but according to Chanyeol, as well as the marked calendar on his wall, it had been eight months since the accident.

Eight months since Jongin’s life had almost come to an end – but had instead just paused and seemed to restart.

Restart when he was already twenty-three years old.

“You’re quiet today.” Chanyeol commented after a while of silence. Not that Jongin wasn’t quiet every day – but Chanyeol seemed to always make note of the prolonged silence. Most of the time they filled the empty space with questions, some of Chanyeol’s life before the accident where he told stories of a person he loved more dearly than his mother – something Jongin had always widened his eyes in hearing – and then questions about the past that Jongin could not remember.

Chanyeol always filled in the details that he could, stopping only when he thought it would be too much. Too much for Jongin to handle, or for Chanyeol to handle, he could never be sure.

Either way, there were a few things written in the notebook at his bedside that he repeated every night before he went to sleep, trying to memorize them, trying to keep them in his mind for the prolonged amount of time it would take him to recall such things. If he reminded himself of them, maybe it would make it easier on his mind to actually remember the minute details of each memory.

Jongin wasn’t really sure which details were more important to remember – maybe the color of Chanyeol’s eyes, or the way that he smiled every morning when he greeted him, already making breakfast in the kitchen.

Maybe it was the way that Chanyeol looked at Jongin when the man thought he wasn’t looking – maybe those were the most precious moments that he should have remembered above all else. But to be quite honest, he was not sure _why_ he should remember them, and though he knew that Chanyeol was important to him, or was at least supposed to be important to him…

Jongin didn’t know why.

It went on like that always, this back and forth of not knowing, but asking relentless questions of Chanyeol until the other man became exhausted. Jongin was like a child, but Chanyeol seemed to indulge him in many things – including the badgering questions he asked of the other…

 

The next morning, when Jongin woke to the sound of the door opening, he could feel something threatening to spill over in his heart. An excitement that was there only some days, when the memories pieced themselves together from the past few months. There were some days that he couldn’t remember yesterday, and then others when he could remember everything that happened since the accident in an acute kaleidoscope of sound and feeling and smell.

It was mostly Chanyeol that had that effect on him though – the man that took care of him so gently, so lovingly, and yet Jongin didn’t know why. He had asked Chanyeol, again and again and again.

Yet…nothing. Th man refused to answer his question, diverting it by saying he needed to go for the day, needed to prepare Jongin’s next meal, needed to clean something.

So when the door opened that morning, Jongin’s memory like that acute kaleidoscope of emotions and sensations, he asked Chanyeol outright from where he was still lying in bed, the blankets up high as if they were protecting him from the outside world.

“Why do you come here every day?” he called, voice surprisingly resilient despite just waking up. He would have liked to think it was because he was so resolved on getting his question answered today, but to be quite honest, probably would never know why it fluctuated so much.

Jongin could hear Chanyeol’s footsteps padding through the small apartment, the sound of the man taking his shoes off at the front door, taking his jacket off and then hanging it up on the hooks right before the kitchen. Jongin could hear the man shuffle a bit before he came up to Jongin’s bedroom door, waving before putting up a finger in response, telling him to wait just one moment. He was going to turn the stove on to pour some heat into the chilled apartment.

By the looks of Chanyeol’s hair, it had been raining out.

When the other man finally did all the things he needed, he came into Jongin’s room, the door already propped open as it always was. Jongin could not remember a night when the door was not propped open, when he wasn’t vulnerable to the other rooms of the apartment.

But it wasn’t as if someone else lived here with him, wasn’t as if the door did not automatically lock behind itself, barring anyone from entering lest they had a key. He was safe here, and he had grown used to the door being open at night. Jongin had grown used to the sounds from the other rooms, too – like the clock ticking on the wall, or the soft patter of rain that had fallen the night previous, but had drowned out as a background noise well into the morning. He had not even noticed the sound anymore, waking after a vivid dream of sunlight shooting through the room and illuminating everything in its path.

Jongin repeated his question, this time getting up from his bed and padding bare-chested out into the living room, and then the kitchen. He watched Chanyeol move around the small space as if he belonged there. And he did.

“Why do you come here every day?” he asked again.

Instead of really answering his question, Chanyeol posed a question in reply, averting answering directly. It was not the first time the other man had done it, and probably would not have been the last either.

“Do you not want me here?” Chanyeol asked.

Jongin probably took too long to actually answer that question. It should have been a quick ‘no’, but then his mind started to spin and he kept thinking of the possible reason why Chanyeol was here. Had there been a point before Jongin’s accident that he had asked the other man to watch over him? Had the hospital Jongin had been taken to assigned Chanyeol to him as an in-home nurse? That explanation didn’t dive into why Chanyeol always looked at him so lovingly though, as if he knew Jongin more than just knowing _about_ him. There was a certain level of intimacy in Chanyeol’s stare that Jongin could never place.

Chanyeol cleared his throat, raising an eyebrow before he was handing Jongin something – a slip of paper concealed in an envelope.

“This came a few weeks ago, but I wasn’t sure if I should open it, or when I should give it to you. It’s addressed to the both of us, from an old friend.” And Chanyeol let a lovely smile stretch his lips then, making his face light up in that way it did. The man wasn’t always so bright and beautiful, there were times that Jongin saw him tired and exhausted from a day’s work – and more than just physically exhausted, too. There were those times when Jongin asked too many personal questions and he could see it in Chanyeol’s face, the mental and emotional exhaustion that was hitting him.

But there were still a million different questions surfacing in his head.

Jongin took the envelope from him, not too quick to open it, but also rather impatient to see what was inside. He had a feeling it would answer some questions – one of them being why the letter was addressed to both Jongin _and_ Chanyeol.

He decided to sit down to read it, the letter falling out of the envelope, and then a set of pictures falling out as well. Jongin could not help but look at those first, eyes going wide as he stared at himself inside the picture – smile bright and skin tanned. Since the accident he had gotten paler, though he was still darker in comparison to Chanyeol. But his skin looked sickly now, losing the vibrancy of the undertones because of his memory loss. Jongin had looked back on old pictures of himself and had missed who he used to be – the man that had clearly been as vibrant as the sun, smiles and laughter, and love.

The first picture was not just of him, but a version of Jongin hanging on lightly to a version of Chanyeol. He, too, looked different than he did now. Though Chanyeol did not look sickly and just not himself as Jongin often did, there was still something missing from Chanyeol now that seemed to be ever present in the photos before Jongin. He smiled more – and brighter – in the pictures. His face lit up, and they were like two shining stars standing right beside each other.

The last photo had Jongin clutching it tight between his fingers. He hadn’t expected to see something like this.

Looking up at Chanyeol first before he glanced back down at the last photo, Jongin’s eyes widened at what he was seeing. Like the first few photos within the envelope, Chanyeol and Jongin were standing close together, skin touching more than Jongin would have liked to touch anyone. But clearly that hadn’t been an issue whenever these pictures had been taken. There wasn’t a date on the front or back of them, but the letter was stamped from some months ago, though Chanyeol had said it only a arrived a few weeks ago.

The two were kissing in the picture, and not a friendly peck on the cheek, or what Jongin would have assumed would be a dare drawn up by a few of their friends – friends that Jongin clearly no longer remembered. But no, this was something much deeper, and though it did not look dirty or bad in the photo, there was something much worse about looking at it now, with Chanyeol right there in front of him.

The photo and kiss whispered of love – and Jongin could see if in many ways, eyes following the way the two of them curved around each other in the picture. The way that Chanyeol’s hand was so gentle against Jongin’s cheek, and how even though Chanyeol’s hand blocked a portion of his face from the camera, Jongin could still see his own smile, lips pressed back against Chanyeol’s all the while. It was a sweet, candid photo that had clearly not meant to be captured on film, but had nevertheless. It was a secret, and though it was not one of those secrets to be kept hidden by doors, it was a secret all the same in that Jongin wasn’t supposed to know this existed – wasn’t supposed to know there was this possibility of the past.

That there was very clearly something he had been missing in the last few months since his accident.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked, looking up. Jongin had connected the dots after looking at the photos, and could understand now why Chanyeol hadn’t wanted to say something. The pictures could be fakes, too, that was always a possibility, but Jongin always had a good eye in finding things like that. These weren’t fake, even if for a split second he wished they were.

Chanyeol sighed before sitting across the table from Jongin, hands going to reach for his before they retreated back into Chanyeol’s own personal space, almost like he was afraid to reach for Jongin after such a truth was revealed.

“I had promised to never lie to you, but when you got in that accident…it was no longer possible. I wanted to protect you from yourself, from me, more than anything else in the world. The doctors said that it wouldn’t be good for your recovery to bombard you with questions and past truths. Here I was, your….” Chanyeol fought to say the word aloud, “boyfriend, and I couldn’t even tell you that I loved you. You didn’t know who I was, not really. When you first woke up, you smiled at me and I thought _well maybe he will remember_ , but then you had asked me if I was your nurse, saying that you were so lucky to have such a pretty nurse.” Jongin could see Chanyeol’s heart breaking right there in front of him. He wanted to reach out and comfort him, but stayed still.

Jongin let Chanyeol continue, talking of how over the next few months, Chanyeol had lied and said he was there to take care of Jongin. It had always seemed right for Chanyeol to be there, for them to be there together, but Jongin had never understood that this was Chanyeol’s house, too.

“You never realized, never even thought that this could be my house, too. Your memory was so horrible, and you couldn’t remember people or places or events. I couldn’t expect you to remember that this was _our_ house, the one we had been living in together for the past two years. It broke my heart every time you had to climb into that bed alone and I couldn’t join you without explaining everything to you. The doctors told me not to, that it would only hurt you in the end.”

Jongin glanced back down at the last photo, a smile perking on his lips even though he was still a little confused. Chanyeol had been with him for months now, day in and day out. If this was his house too, where did he go at night? Where had he been staying for the last several months?

“So then why are you telling me this all now?” Jongin asked him.

Chanyeol looked so pained that he couldn’t respond for a long while, getting choked up. Jongin could understand why, and a deep part inside of him urged him to reach out to the other man and hold him close, but this was also still all new, and he wasn’t sure how Chanyeol would react or take it. Maybe it would come across as pity, and Jongin didn’t want that.

“You’re always asking me why I’m here, why I come back every morning, and leave so late at night. I want to make sure that you’re fed, want to make sure that you’re healthy and happy. Throughout our entire relationship, that’s all I ever wanted for you. I couldn’t stand it, leaving you alone here to fend for yourself with your memory loss. Even if the doctors had cleared you to make food on your own, to live by yourself. I just…couldn’t do it. And maybe that’s a little selfish of me, but i just…”

Chanyeol stopped speaking, and Jongin could understand why he no longer had the words to say aloud. There were tears brimming along the edges of his eyes, and Jongin did something impulsive when he reached forward and wiped them away, only making the tears run faster down Chanyeol’s face as he lost all composure. He had always seemed like such a upright, strong person to Jongin, but even he understood that everyone had their weaknesses – and that crying, despite the stereotype and misconception was not a weakness in a man.

It was a strength.

After a while of silence and Chanyeol just gripping his face in his hands, trying to hide the tears from Jongin, both of them kind of just looked up at each other and sighed. They were both a little raw and open. Jongin hadn’t cried, but his eyes stung with the need of it. This was all still a bit confusing to him, but it made sense in other variations,

He understood now why Chanyeol kept coming back and he wouldn’t ask for Chanyeol to leave tonight. It didn’t make sense. Chanyeol had said this was both their house. He wouldn’t continue to kick the other man out, even if his mind wouldn’t allow him to remember the emotions the two used to share for one another.

Jongin was eventually going to start feeling it again, he knew. Even if that meant starting from scratch again. He could see himself loving Chanyeol very easily.

“Stay here tonight.” He said abruptly, not even having read the letter within the envelope. Jongin didn’t need it to understand what he used to feel for Chanyeol – and clearly what Chanyeol still felt for him. The pictures had been enough, and clearly whoever had sent and addressed the letter to both of them had seen that coming. “This is your house too, you’ll spend the night here, and I won’t hear you complain about it.”

A long stretch of silence, with the pattering of rain still tapping away at the windows and flowerbeds outside.

But Chanyeol nodded, not fighting Jongin on this, and even smiling through the lingering tears in his eyes. Jongin couldn’t help but smile, too, and maybe this would work out in the end.

He supposed they would see where this got him – got them.

Jongin looked once more at the photo lying there before him, finger pressed lightly over their faces as he tried to remember the sensation of Chanyeol’s lips against his. It must have felt nice, he was sure.

Maybe he would find that sensation again soon.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you all so much for reading! I know this is really short, and to be honest it could have been written with much more effort and heart as I had originally planned it. But I hope despite the length someone out there enjoys it <3


End file.
